Ken Smailes and Sophie Longley

NUS LGBT Conference 2012

NUS Student conference this year was amazing. It was my first time going to a conference, let alone voting on important issues that would affect all LGBT students. At first, it was hard to get to grips with how to vote on the motions; but it got easier as the day progressed. Attending this conference has brought to light just how much students from universities all over the UK care about LGBT issues. What’s more, it also emphasised the amount of work NUS has done over the years. The workshops throughout the weekend were very useful. I attended a workshop about producing an effective campaign which demonstrated just how much hard work goes in to promoting LGBT issues. Other workshops I participated in were ‘Faith and Sexuality’ and ‘LGBT in Sport’. The discussions in the ‘Faith and Sexuality’ workshop were extremely thought-provoking. It showed that identifying as LGBT does not mean the loss of religious beliefs. It also gave us some ideas on how to unite our LGBT group with some of Reading University’s religious societies. ‘LGBT in Sport’ was a great discussion to attend as it focused on the difficulties some LGBT people have within the sporting world. What was most interesting were the problems transgendered people faced in relation to single sex sports teams and changing rooms. The highlight of the trip was the awards dinner where our very own LGBT group came top 5 in ‘most developed’, ‘best campaign’ and ‘best LGBT Officer/President’. Next year, we’ll win them all! 



Sophie x

Ken Smailes

NUS LGBT Conference 2012

NUS LGBT Conference, a weekend of drama, policy, motions, Manchester nightlife and development of LGBT rights. I can honestly say I have never been to such an encouraging and thought provoking conference. The Reading University delegation decided that we would all write a blog/report so that you, the society can see how we voted on your behave and to encourage you to get involved in the LGBT movement and the fight for ever increasing rights.

Over the weekend there a number of different workshops that I attended, the most interesting and important to me was one titled ‘faith and sexuality, a dialogue’. This workshop had a lot of relevance to me as I grew up in a very Christian family and have always found the relationship between faith and sexuality particularly difficult to negotiate. The workshop gave advice on how to workshops to have an open and frank discussion about how sexuality and different faiths can work together; you don’t just have to have one or another. It was also really interesting to see how many people at conference both defined as LGBT and as with faith, which was encouraging.

The weekend was mainly filled with motion debate; these motions go into NUS LGBT policy and dictate how the campaign is run over the next year. I am happy to say that the majority of policy passed was brilliant, it included motions to encourage more work on helping trans people parent, sexual health, more equal representation of bisexual people and continuation of the campaign on ending the blood donation bad for men who sleep with men. The motion that did seem to be most controversial was that including Harry Potter and Dumbledore as a gay figure, this definitely brought some strong opinions from the conference floor. All these motions and discussion was really heartening but did make me want to stay on another year to be able to work on these new campaigns!

Lastly the highlight of the weekend for me had to be the NUS LGBT awards and Gala Dinner which celebrated 40 years of the NUS LGBT campaign. There were a total of six awards up for grabs and Reading University Student Union LGBT was eligible for 5 of these. I am very proud to say that we were shortlisted for three of them, which means we were in the top five for these categories out of nearly 100 institutions!! These were Campaign of the Year, Society Development Award and LGBT Higher Education Student of the Year. To get this amount of shortlists was incredible; it is testament to the work of the society, the amazing people in it and the lengths we have all come. You should all feel so proud of yourself and I know we are only going to get better year on year.

Ken Smailes

LGBT President and RUSU LGBT Student Officer

Ben Cohen - With Ken Smailes, Karl Hobley and Ben Rider

Manchester NUS LGBT Conference 2012

I had an amazing weekend at the conference! It was really interesting to find out about what the national committee were doing and had planned for the year ahead. Their priority campaigns related to LGBT issues in sport and religion and bullying of LGBT people at school. These were all campaigns that I planned to focus on at Reading next year so it was great to see that NUS was already a step ahead and that there would be support to implement the campaigns I am passionate about.

 The conference workshops gave me a great opportunity to learn about how to carry out campaigns and how to start the planning process.  I also got to go to a workshop on bullying at schools which was both very interesting and inspiring. Apart from the workshops I also learnt lots from the people that I talked to over the weekend. Most importantly I got to talk to lots of Trans students and find out about the issues that they face at university. This was great as I had never had the chance to talk to a Trans student at Reading.

The motions debates in which we, as delegates from our different universities, got to vote on were a bit of a mixed bag. Most of the ideas that people proposed for the NUS LGBT committee to focus on in the coming year were very significant and useful, in my opinion. Some, on the other hand, were not so relevant, most notably a “Gay Dumbledore” campaign idea to raise awareness of the Harry Potter character as a homosexual in literature. The adding of “Parts” and “Amendments” to pointless campaigns, such as this, was quite infuriating!

The Saturday night Gala dinner was brilliant. Listening to the rugby star Ben Cohen give a speech and talk about his work on bullying in schools was fascinating and getting a picture with him was undoubtedly also a highlight of the evening! The best part, however, was being shortlisted for 3 awards. We gasped when the first one was announced and were so shocked to find out we were in two of the other lists! So well done to everybody who contributed to getting these amazing tokens of achievement and especially to Ken for his tireless work!

The nights out were awesome! I must say Manchester’s gay nightlife is second to none. With a whole street and surrounding area packed with bars and clubs it’s a wonder why anyone would go anywhere else! Friday night was hilarious with my highlight being chasing after Ken as he was being dragged into Cruise 101. Saturday night was even better and I got to chat to loads of new people and tell all the Leeds LGBT how much I love them!

The conference weekend was loads of fun and I can’t wait to go again next year!

Ben Rider

Societies' Ball

Hello everyone, I hope you are all having a fantastic Easter break before exams all start in Summer Term. I just wanted update you about the LGBT being welcomed at the Societies' Ball at the end of last term (15th March).

In previous years while I've been attending UoR the LGBT has been a fully run society like any of the other societies, however for the past couple of years RUSU has reorganised and changed it into a Liberation & Representation Group. So normally the LGBT would not have been considered for any awards, however on this occasion RUSU felt that the LGBT group deserved a special mention because of the hard work done by all of the LGBT group this year including the committee, its members and most importantly Ken Smailes, the LGBT President and RUSU Part-Time Officer.

Karl Hobley, RUSU President gave the LGBT a special mention on behalf of Steph Johnson, Vice President for Welfare & Representation and mentioned the significant turnaround that the LGBT has made this year with events such as:

• Antidote, LGBT's first union social
• LGBT History Month
• Film showings of LGBT films including Anne Lister and Milk
• Raising awareness and getting people talking about Stonewall's 'Some People Are Gay, Get Over It!' campaign
• The very popular and well attended marriage legalisation debate (which was also recorded by RU:ON)
• Visiting Amersham & Wycombe College for a Q&A to students on LGBT issues
• Public lectures by staff on LGBT history
• Weekly coffee/lunch hour
• Buddy scheme
• Staff training on LGBT
• Trip to National Student Pride at Brighton
• And much more

Ken was asked to give a short speech on stage and congratulated the members of the LGBT for getting involved and bringing the group back to life so that the LGBT reflects and responds to the issues of LGBT students. 

The Ball was an brilliant night with a champagne reception, gorgeous meal, drinks, awards ceremony with performances from societies such as Singer Songwriters, Bellydance and Drama, and also the after-party in Cafe Mondial. The most awards for any society went to St John's Ambulance which Ken has also been a highly active committee member of this academic year.

I would like to personally say thank you to everyone who has taken part this year and contributed to the events we have held and particularly to Ken who has made a massive change to the LGBT and organised some fantastic events and most definitely started the ball rolling again for next academic year to take over.

There are more events planned for the Summer Term including a trip to London in Week 1, check out the Events on the bottom of the page for more information and links to Facebook.

-- Robert Cathles, Welfare & Communications Officer

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